First and Only Live Feeding

[Poisoned1]

So I'm going to my first and only live feeding for my snake, I made sure he is not a baby anymore, and I'm going to take a lot of precautions just in case.
Obviously I will be there the whole time and will keep an eye on everything.
Loki is a california king snake, He's almost well over a year old, and I'm going to feed him one adult live mouse.
That's it just once
The reason? I want to experience it first hand I want to see what will happen call me a sadist if you will but this will be a one time thing.

Opinions?

 

[Dave94]

My opinion,


Wrong, no need to risk your snake getting bitten injured for your enjoyment, it should be illegal like Australia IMO.

 

[herpfreak]

When I first got into the hobby, I was 100% anti-live. My first snake, my ball girl, went two years only eating live. I supervised each feeding very closely. Two years, no problems. (That is not to say that bites don't happen. They DO, and an unattended rodent can kill a snake.)

I greatly prefer f/t, though. Cheaper, easier, safer, and the freezing gets rid of any parasites. But I think live is perfectly fine, as long as it is supervised.

 

[Poisoned1]

Well I did the live feeding yesterday
Obviously supervised, it was very interesting to watch, very quick as well
But curious you said it's cheaper, I paid $2 for the live mouse but I pay about $4 for a f/t mouse.
I won't do it again but It was realy interesting.

 

[lacy_black]

I'm one of the other side I suppose. I only feed live (breeding hamsters and rats myself). I tried the f\t when I first got Ballz, i'll never starve another snake like I did him for 6 months. He won and I don't mind feeding live anymore, to them it's natural. I also don't have to be in the line of fire like I did with the f\t. Drop the live in and they do the job of moving til the snake see's them.
Yes it is interesting to watch at first but it gets boring. Now we just put them in and check on them every 5 minutes.

 

[herpfreak]

Well I did the live feeding yesterday
Obviously supervised, it was very interesting to watch, very quick as well
But curious you said it's cheaper, I paid $2 for the live mouse but I pay about $4 for a f/t mouse.
I won't do it again but It was realy interesting.

Really? That's weird. I pay $2 for a live mouse, $1 for a frozen; $5 small live rat, $3 small frozen. :?

 

[Poisoned1]

Well I don't know any breeders here so I stop by the local pet store where they sell them.

 

[Gloryhound]

We feed both live and F/T to our snakes. It all depends on the snake. Our 4 blood pythons all eat F/T as we do not want them to be food agressive. Our three Kenyan Sand Boas only eat live. Our 50+ ball pythons are all different. Some our mousers only, some eat rats only, some will only take F/T, others will only take live, and one actually requires a P/K (nope will not touch a live or F/T, but is all over a Pre killed, lazy little devil.) We even have a couple of our big breeder morphs that we know we have no intention of selling that only eat African Soft Furred rats with gusto). Yea call me what you want, but you don't have to stand over them like a hawk when feeding live. I know with just our breeders it would be several long nights of feeding if we had to do that and imagine the larger breeders that have a thousand snakes plus! No we drop it in, move to the next enclosure go about 6 to 10 cages at a time this way then go back to the first and see if the rodent is wrapped. If it isn't wrapped in 5 minutes or so the snake is not going to probably eat. Yes a lot can happen in 5 minutes, but we also stay in the room and listen. With ball pythons a lot of times if they feel threatened they will do a nose strike at the rodent. Basically head butt it away. If you see this type of activity remove the rodent and wait another week.

 

[Okiemavis]

I'm a bit squeamish about live, but I decided to give my corn live for the first time last week, and I was actually really proud of what a good hunter she was!! She got the hopper first strike, coiled immediately, all while dangling from a tree

Feeding live to the snakes at work kinda got me over it (despite the fact that I've been a vegetarian since I was 12). My main issue with frozen is that it's not NEARLY as nutritiously sound as live- a lot of things are lost in them being frozen. I always try to feed my vegetarian animals fresh produce, why should my carnivores be any different? Plus, the likelihood that they were not properly frozen at some point, the process of thawing, it's just all not so great for the proteins. At least I know when I'm feeding live that my mice were cared for humanely by me and were gut loaded before being fed. In my opinion, and experienced rodent hunter won't be injured by the feeder unless they AREN'T hungry, in which case, why are you feeding the snake in the first place? Obviously, all snakes should be monitored while being fed live, and if the snake doesn't go for it, take it out!

 

[herpfreak]

True, the process of freezing does get rid of some good proteins, but it will also kill any mites or parasites in the rodent. Some live rodents are loaded with parasites; one of my snakes that only recently converted to f/t had pinworms for the past six months. Now she's got some type of other parasites, too.

 

[OgleRpets]

All of my snakes but one eat live. They won't touch frozen / thawed no matter how hard we try. And the one that eats f/t won't touch live at all.

 

[lacy_black]

In the end it's really the snakes choice. I mean yes we can force some of them to starve til they accept frozen but why? They're built for killing and I dunno about others but I know mine have perfected the art. I figure if i'm there and watching if anything happens i'll deal with the problem.
Only once has there been an almost problem, my old mexican black king was having problems with her mouse, he was a mean sucker :lol: anyhow I just calmly reached in with tongs and broke his neck, problem solved.

 

[herpfreak]

I haven't had any of my snakes get injured, but we had a close call. My big ball girl struck at a rat and missed. The rat was screaming and bleeding everywhere, it would have bit her no doubt if she hadn't grabbed it again.

I was sitting there with my fist in my mouth. I was terrified for her.

 

[zimbabwepegasus]

I think it would be fair to say that if you are a conscientious and responsible snake owner, who is aware of her snake's habits and pays attention, feeding whichever way will be just fine.
I do think feeding F/T cuts down on the ***** factor. And I really really really do not like the people I'm sure we've all run into who seem to only have snakes to watch them eat a live mouse/rat.

I feed all 3 of mine F/T because they all took right to it and it's easier for me than dealing with live mice. I don't want to keep mice and it's a pain to be at the pet store all the time (and somehow I find myself considerably more likely to bring a new friend home)- pulling something out of the freezer's just more convenient.

 

[Eventide]

I don't think it's bad at all to want to watch something like that at least once. It's fascinating.

As long as you're there, making sure the snake isn't going to get chewed on, I think it's fine. A few of my ball pythons have issues eating f/t, so they get live. I've only had once incident where a live food item injured the snake, and it was minor.